The difference between social referrals and social conversions

Referrals – When somebody clicks on a link coming from a social platform, this is known as a referral.

Conversion – When somebody clicks on a link from your social page and ‘completes an action.

You may well be getting thousands of engagements, but you need to be sure they are relevant. By using Google Analytics, you’ll be able to see if people are going from your social media to the right pages of your website (referrals) and then acts on what they see (conversions). For example, if you have an ecommerce site, you’ll be able to see who visits the site from which social media channel and then buys something. Another company may just want people to visit their website in order to make an enquiry, so somebody filling out the contact form would count as a conversion.

Are your social engagements effective?

Just because a post gets a lot of social engagements, such as retweets or likes, doesn’t mean it’s doing the job. The brilliance of Google Analytics is that you can see which pages people find most attractive to click on from social, and where they go from that point. This is where you can use the information to your advantage. You will be able to see the posts that work, can check the day of the engagements, as well as what the post was. From that information, you will be able to see what form of writing works best to encourage referrals and conversions, as well as assess the most effective landing pages from each social media platform.

By using this information effectively, you should be able to see an increase in your social referrals and conversions.

Quality over quantity

If you’re new to Google Analytics, it’s best to start off with small targets, with just with referral targets. Once you’re more confident, work your way up to conversions. Make the targets adventurous but also not too unrealistic. You will soon see what works best for your target audience. Always bear in mind that as you become more proficient, your engagements and impressions could drop, but this could mean you’re actually hitting your main objectives.

If you want to use social media as a tool to drive people to your website, please get in touch: we have a social team ready and eager to help you.